Une Reverie

Last night I dreamed.

The darkness of the building overwhelmed me. That was key to the dream--that dreary, all-encompassing darkness. Somehow it made everything acceptable. Made what happened acceptable.

I do not remember when I entered the Bistro de Jouissance. How I came to be at such a place I do not know. Never a place of wholesome bread and finer wine, the name was a poor one to mask the brazen nature of this house of ill repute. Jouissance. This may have been an American brothel, but the French words could not hide the house's intention: to get off as many men as would provide the purse.

Scantly clad bodies hovered in the shadows. I watched as the women stood in loose lines like brood mares awaiting examination for purchase. And fine connoisseurs such gentlemen were. I never would see their faces but I always saw their intentions. Take Janice into the room over there, do. She knows well how to drop to her knees and suck. And off they went, as happy as any romantic pair with picnic basket and table cloth. Such things are easily feigned.

I watched the corseted young lady lower her eyes before a prospective patron. I knew well what would occur in that setting. She would have to tell him her limits beforehand. He might be offered the crop. If he paid, she would always please though his restrictions be tighter than her corset.

But lo and behold, a vision resplendent on a throne above the rest. A Norse goddess, golden locks flowing over a face which had seen but little of the day for years. She sat on her dais as I imagined the first Elizabeth may have done. Her face, expressionless, proud, eyes of that dreadful blue few dare to meet.

In that slow, rolling haze peculiar to a dream, I approached her majesty. Kneeling like a courtier. Her smile was slow and small, as though it were something she but deigned to give me.

"I cannot pay," I whispered. She laughed low in her throat, bestowing upon me another small smile.

"No need," replied she.

Naked and humiliated, I waited for my livelihood.

A Return to the Black

Dirt. It covered everything. Covered her bed, covered her chair, covered her dresser. Was it dirt or dust? Sometimes she could not tell, it was so fine. Yet it had indeed aspects of dirt--the itty bit of moisture, the way it clung beneath her fingernails.

She was living in a barren garden. Was she perhaps the plant? The fragile orchid growing in the damp conditions? If so, she was certainly wilting here. No sun at all, for days and days on end. Dark, weathered curtains shielded her from that vicious warmth-bringer.

"Matti," one of them whispered sweetly into her ear. "Matti, when do you think you'll see the sun again?" She moaned incoherently in response.

"Matti." This one was a more masculine voice, cultured and melodious. "Matti, you know every old house has a ghost to haunt it, no?" She nodded, rocking back and forth on her dirty bed. "Matti...you are that ghost." This was only greeted with more moans.

"You are a ghost, Matti," the voice insisted. "A ghost, a shadow. You are no longer a human being with a physical, lively essence. If they see you at all, they will be frightened." His voice turned into an unpleasant hiss as it neared her ear. Her eyes popped open of their own accord, fright flooded into irises the color of the little blue pills she once took.

"Yes," another joined in eagerly, sprightly, almost. "They're all afraid of you. That's why he left you--he couldn't take the daily horror of you." She squirmed in her bed, closing her eyes shut at the thought of it.

"Face it," yet another insinuated. "Face it. You are a freak." There was a slow certainty in the words, an horrifically comforting feel to them. The other voices chuckled and cackled in agreement. She was certain she heard the clinking of glasses together, as though it were a toast. A toast to madness.

Dirt, dirt, dirt. Even the packaging of the leftover bags of chips and snack cakes she had eaten before she had run out of food entirely were beginning to disentegrate, coagulate into dirt. The dirt tangled in her now greasy hair. The dirt stained her two-week old pyjamas, stained her bare feet, stained her hands.

Matti curled up into a ball on that dirty bed, her arms tightening around her bent legs. She leaned down her head and began biting at her knee, hard. The talking continued, the casual conversations on the horror that was Matti. Her grip on her knee slackened. Blood filled her mouth. Filled her lifeless mouth.